Tootfinder

Forced labor was the foundation of an economic system that knew no color boundaries; like an open sore the plantations grew upon the Caribbean, and when the Indians died, and the supply of white trash failed to meet demand, the merchants tapped deeper into Africa, drawing away men and women not because they were black, but because they were cheap, limitless in number, and better. European class societies whose elite thought nothing of hanging an English child for petty theft, or packing indentured workers, white or black, like herring into the festering holds of ships, cared less about the origins of their laborers than the production of their labor. Slavery was not born of racism; rather, racism was the consequence of slavery. In the first days of colonialism, when the merchants sailed away from the insular world of Europe, the color of the worker’s skin meant no more to them than it did to the kings of Africa, rulers who lorded over thousands of their own slaves, and who for a suitable profit were more than willing to pass them along. Of course, all of this mattered little to the men and women unloaded into bondage in Saint Domingue. For them the enemy had a face, and there was no doubt as to its color.
Wade Davis -- The Serpent and the Rainbow
#Slavery #Racism #Abolition #Haiti #Capitalism